The Movie Is A MessI doubt I was the only person to think that announcing the nine month delay a month before the movie was due to open seemed less like a business decision to increase profit than a panicked delaying tactic that'll buy some time to fix a movie that the studio suddenly is very worried about. Nine months is a long time, especially if you consider that other, highly-successful, blockbusters have been shot in significantly shorter periods (*coughAvengerscough*) - So could this delay have more to do with giving moviemakers the chance to rework the movie, including however many reshoots are deemed necessary, before letting it loose on the world? Alternatively…

The Movie Wasn't Finished…It's certainly not impossible that the delay came about because Retaliation wasn't ready in time in the first place. It's not unusual for movies to be tweaked right up until their release date (or beyond; the final sequence in Avengers was, remember, show after the movie was released abroad), and stories of blockbuster movies almost missing their release dates because they weren't done have floated around for years now. What if Retaliation just happens to be the first time that a studio actually ran out of time to finish things up?

You Sunk My BattleshipBattleship flopping was bad news for Paramount and Hasbro - Worse, perhaps, for poor Taylor Kitsch who now has to shoulder both this and John Carter dying in the same year - and I have to wonder if it was such bad news that the bumping of GI Joe was made that little bit easier… Certainly, the two aren't connected beyond their origins, but if Joe had tanked just a month after Battleship did, I can't imagine that Paramount would be too eager to green light any more projects from Hasbro any time soon. Pushing Retaliation out to early 2013 gives everyone time to forget, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Paramount Studios Is Run By CobraAdmittedly, this is somewhat of a longshot, but it's possible that Cobra Commander's fictitious words could have proven to be so alluring that the heads of Paramount have found themselves swayed into a froth of anti-Joe sentiment and tried to hurt the fighting force by burying their film in the cold, grey month of March - which, if the Mayans are correct, may not ever come. Take that, GI Joe!

It Really Just Takes That Long To Do Good 3DWell, why not? We know that Lucasfilm apparently took months to turn The Phantom Menace into 3D properly, and James Cameron spent an amazingly long time transferring Titanic. Just because we're used to the example of Clash of The Titans's speedy transferral into 3D doesn't mean that all action movies have to be rushed through the process. So, perhaps it's really just what we've been told - but if that's the case, then I can't tell you how much I'll be expecting this to be the most beautifully-shot 3D action movie ever made when it finally appears. Yo that, moviemakers.